by Mike Carey, January 03, 2012

2011 Year in Review


Welcome to my annual “Year in Review” report. Maybe we should call it “State of the Web Site” report. Well, our State is “Good”!

The big achievement this year has to be the updating of our Forum. The old forum was buggy and causing unexpected episodes of crashing WashingtonLakes.com. Not a very good thing. Aaron got to work and coded a new forum software system which is much more stable and user/moderator friendly. As is to be expected with updates, there were some initial issues to figure out, not least of which was requiring everyone to update their accounts. I know that was a huge hassle and Aaron and I apologize for it, but it was necessary. Going forward we now have a stable, first rate Forum. Yaa!

Readership numbers continue onward and upward. The Forum grew from 14,200 registered members to almost 18,000. Our monthly unique visitors this year peaked at 72,635 in July, in thanks I’m sure to the wonderful Baker Lake sockeye fishery. Our total visits to the web site for 2011 were over 3.1 million visits, up from 2.8 million. Our members posted 5,213 fishing reports, a slight increase from last year. This was a Pink Salmon and Baker Lake Sockeye year which really boosted those reports. Also, very fun to watch was the steady growth of steelhead/river fishing reports. We are, I believe, the “go to” source for river reports. I don’t know of any other websites that come close to posting the numbers our members are posting!

The usual list of people to thank – first, our Mods: Gringo Pescador, Big D, Amx, and Joe. You guys are great and keep the Forum from being overrun by nastiness and SPAM! I’d also like to give a special thanks to Marc Martyn, who has contributed a lot over the years to the site. He decided to take a break this year from moderating. We appreciate all he and the other Mods do to keep the site standards high.

Thanks also to our growing list of contributing writers: John Kruse (audio reports), Uncle Wes, Bruce Middleton, new-comers Dave Graybill, and Jason Brooks. And a personal HUGE THANK YOU to my good fishing buddy Bob Johansen. Bob continues to actively fish and provide our site with lake overviews and pictures, and some wonderful and timely articles. Thanks Bob!

Finally and as always Aaron and I thank you, the readers of WashingonLakes.com, for submitting your fishing reports, posting on the Forums, or just logging on and reading was new. You guys continue to make this site “Number One” for current fishing reports and information in Washington and the Pacific Northwest. Here’s to another great year of fishing adventures. Bring 2012 on!

Mike